Adult

Alexander Ferguson takes up his new parish, a poor. He hopes to uncover the truth behind the legend of the selkies --- mermaids or seal people who have been sighted off the north of Scotland for centuries. It will be more than a century before the Sea House reluctantly gives up its secrets. Ruth and Michael buy the grand building. Their dreams are marred by a shocking discovery. The tiny bones of a baby are buried beneath the house; the child's fragile legs are fused together --- a mermaid child.

Ephram Jennings has never forgotten the beautiful girl with the long braids running through the piney woods of Liberty, their small East Texas town. Young Ruby, who has suffered beyond imagining, flees Liberty for the bright pull of 1950s New York. When a telegram from her cousin forces her to return home, 30-year-old Ruby finds herself reliving the devastating violence of her girlhood. Meanwhile, Ephram must choose between loyalty to the sister who raised him and the chance for a life with the woman he has loved since he was a boy.

Declan O Donnell has sailed out of Oregon and deep into the vast, wild ocean, finally having had enough of other people and their problems. But the galaxy soon presents him with a string of odd, entertaining and dangerous passengers, who become companions of every sort and stripe. THE PLOVER is the story of their adventures and misadventures in the immense blue country one of their company calls Pacifica.

The hurricane that is the famous author Nicolas Kolt is down to its last battering winds. While he’s hiding on a Tuscan island from publishers, family, friends, and life in general, a whole host of indiscretions and minor misunderstandings come to light. Once more, Nicolas is forced to deal with his past --- a past full of family secrets that he cannot comprehend.

The storm began March 23, 1913, with a series of tornadoes that killed 150 people and injured 400. Then the freezing rains started and the flooding began. It continued for days. Some people drowned in their attics, others on the roads when the tried to flee. It was the nation's most widespread flood ever --- more than 700 people died, hundreds of thousands of homes and buildings were destroyed, and millions were left homeless.

With carbon we access heat, light and mobility at the flick of a switch, while silicon enables us to communicate across the globe in an instant. Yet our use of the Earth's mineral resources is not always for the benefit of humankind --- our relationship with the elements is one of great ambivalence. John Browne, CEO of British Petroleum (BP) for 12 years, vividly describes how seven elements are shaping the world around us, for better and for worse.

All American presidents are commanders in chief by law. Few perform as such in practice. In ROOSEVELT'S CENTURIONS, distinguished historian Joseph E. Persico reveals how, during World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt seized the levers of wartime power like no president since Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.

In 1941, the architects of Japan's sneak attack on Pearl Harbor planned a bold follow-up: a potentially devastating air raid --- this time against New York City and Washington, DC. John Geoghegan’s meticulous research, including first-person accounts from the I-401 crew and the U.S. capturing party, creates a fascinating portrait of the Sen-toku's desperate push into Allied waters and the U.S. Navy's dramatic pursuit, masterfully illuminating a previously forgotten story of the Pacific war.

History casts Tammany Hall as shorthand for the worst of urban politics: graft and patronage personified by notoriously crooked characters. In his groundbreaking work, MACHINE MADE, journalist and historian Terry Golway dismantles these stereotypes, focusing on the many benefits of machine politics for marginalized immigrants. As thousands sought refuge from Ireland’s potato famine, the very question of who would be included under the protection of American democracy was at stake.

Dr. Aribert Heim worked at the Mauthausen concentration camp for only a few months in 1941 but left a devastating mark. According to the testimony of survivors, Heim euthanized patients with injections of gasoline into their hearts and performed surgeries on otherwise healthy people. In THE ETERNAL NAZI, Nicholas Kulish and Souad Mekhennet reveal for the first time how Heim evaded capture while inspiring a manhunt that outlived him by many years.